UNIONS, ALLIES MAKE GOP PRIVATIZATION OF SOCIAL SECURITY AN ELECTION ISSUE

Friday, July 18, 2008

(PAI)

UNIONS, ALLIES MAKE GOP PRIVATIZATION OF SOCIAL SECURITY AN ELECTION ISSUE
By Mark Gruenberg
PAI Staff Writer

WASHINGTON (PAI)--Unions and their allies launched a drive to make GOP schemes to privatize Social Security an election issue--and this time their target is presumed presidential nominee John McCain, not GOP President George W. Bush.

And, as is typical of modern campaigning, AFL-CIO President John J. Sweeney, AFSCME President Gerald McEntee, Alliance for Retired Americans Executive Director Ed Coyle and the others found a McCain statement to hang their hats on--and hang around McCain’s neck.

It came, they said in a July 16 telephone press conference, when McCain opened a discussion of the Social Security system by calling its financing “an absolute disgrace that has got to be replaced.” McCain, McEntee noted, then backed Bush’s now-dead privatization plan, which the same AFSCME-led coalition smashed in 2005.

The senator later backtracked, the union leader added, by explaining “he’ll have a proposal for Social Security after the election.” That led McEntee and the others to pounce, since questioning Social Security has long been “the third rail” of U.S. politics.

“Social Security is not a game of chance,” McEntee said, calling McCain’s position, like Bush’s, “a gamble.” Added the AFSCME leader: “Do not gamble with Social Security or play the odds on a program that has worked for 70 years.”

Bush’s plan, endorsed by McCain, would divert one-sixth of the system’s payroll tax revenues into Wall Street-controlled private retirement accounts. That diversion would leave Social Security with a suddenly closer time frame where its payroll tax revenue would not cover its payments to seniors and the disabled.

Such a diversion, Sweeney said, would harm “a great American success story,” since “Social Security is affordable, progressive in its impact and fiscally responsible.”

The system’s overseers report payroll tax revenue will exceed payments through at least 2017. After that, the system could make up for shortfalls for at least two decades by cashing in IOU’s it holds from the federal government. Those IOUs--bonds
--represent Social Security surpluses the government borrowed to cover federal deficits.

McCain’s privatization plan “made it clear he would seize any opportunity to weaken the system,” Sweeney added. “He supports raising the retirement age, cutting the level of benefits and diverting payroll taxes to private accounts.”

Coyle, whose organization of union retirees has 3.5 million members, was puzzled by McCain’s stand, given the GOP candidate’s long tenure. “One would expect someone in Congress since 1982 to know better,” Coyle commented.

All three, along with their allies, pledged to make the Social Security issue a key one on the hustings, though all but Coyle declined to answer nuts-and-bolts questions about how many people would emphasize the issue and when.

“We have 200,000 members in Florida, 300,000 in Ohio and 300,000 in Pennsylvania,” Coyle said. “Beginning today in Cincinnati”--where McCain spoke July 16 in a key swing state--“they’ll show up at events where he’s in attendance.

“And they’ll ask him questions about why he made that comment” about Social Security’s finances, Coyle added.

Unions will take another tack: Blasting McCain’s stand, rather than challenging him at rallies. “AFSCME members will start hitting the streets, educating people about it. We won’t let John McCain gamble with Social Security, no way, no how,” McEntee said.

But Coyle also admitted something must be done about Social Security’s finances before it not only starts exceeding payroll tax revenues, but exhausts those government bonds. “America needs a president who would work with Congress to bring the system into long-range balance,” Coyle said. He did not say whether Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.), the presumed Democratic nominee against McCain this fall, has plans to achieve such a balance.